2023-04-22 11:46:34
Kirill Serebrennikov He is one of the most important Russian filmmakers today and a world-acclaimed theater and opera director. He is also a fierce opponent of the regime Vladimir Putin. In his day, he spent three years under house arrest after being convicted of a crime of financial fraud, although it is assumed that the real reasons for his conviction were his opinions on the annexation of Crimea by Russia and other issues in the country such as the electoral fraud, the persecution of the LGTBI community, the lack of respect for basic liberties. Many, yes, reject the image of a martyr that is usually given to him because, they say, for many years he was closely linked to power and was benefited by it. Now his tenth feature film is premiering in Spain, ‘Tchaikovsky’s wife’, centered on the innocent and obsessive young woman with whom Tchaikovsky agreed to marry in order to hide her sexual condition from the public, and whom he psychologically destroyed. With the film, he also points his accusing finger at the Kremlin’s propaganda, which tried to hide the homosexuality of the most famous Russian composer in order to make him an icon of Soviet ideology. Serebrennikov fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. He currently lives in Berlin.
Before shooting ‘Tchaikovsky’s Wife’, you had been wanting to make a film about the composer for many years. Why so much interest?
Because he was a genius and has great universal cultural value. But above all because I think it is necessary that his story be told to the Russian public, because they have no idea what his life was like. For them, Tchaikovsky is nothing more than a statue next to the Moscow Conservatory. It would be enough for them to read books to know a little more about him, but the Russians do not read, they trust propaganda. And the official power of my country has proposed to hide the aspects of Tchaikovsky’s life that they don’t like, like his homosexuality or his sympathies for the monarchy. His biography and the letters he wrote throughout his life have been censored.
You talk about the importance of telling your story to Russian audiences, but is it realistic to hope that the film will be released commercially in your country?
It won’t be in the near future, I’m sure. Those in power hate it, because I am its director and because they don’t like the portrait it paints of Russia’s greatest musician. The institutional persecution of the LGTBI community is increasingly intense. We had to shoot the movie in secret, because we were afraid that if word got out about it, we would get canceled.
‘Tchaikovsky’s wife’ was released at the last Cannes Film Festival, and it did so surrounded by controversy. Many considered that the contest should have boycotted all Russian filmmakers. How do you feel about it?
Tchaikovsky would have been horrified by this war, and I am the same. Our cinema is not propaganda, we do not support the Kremlin narrative. Banning us only serves to prove Putin right, who accuses the West of wanting to suppress Russian identity. My country’s culture has always promoted human values and been anti-war, and I know a lot of artists who have been blacklisted for speaking out against the war, who have lost everything. Many of us have had to go into exile. Obviously, that is nothing compared to the tragedy that Ukrainians are experiencing. In any case, the idea of canceling people simply because of their nationality or because of their language reminds me of Nazism.
For a time, years before your legal problems, you were very close to the government of your country and specifically to figures like Vladislav Surkov, considered the architect of ‘Putinism’. He regrets?
I had a relationship with Surkov, like so many other artists, because he was a technocrat in charge of supervising aid to culture. Until very recently, creating art in my country was completely impossible without state funding. And therefore relationships like that were entirely acceptable. Money from the Russian Ministry of Culture was used to pay for wonderful works of art. But everything changed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The government became tyrannical, my relationship with them became impossible and they made me their enemy. ‘Tchaikovsky’s wife’ was not financed with public money.
It was financed by Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch historically linked to Vladimir Putin…
I will say the same thing that I have already said many times. Abramovich has provided invaluable assistance to contemporary Russian culture. Without his support, artists would not have been able to survive.
How do you think the war will end?
It will end very badly, I’m afraid. I believe that it will not be possible to stop the war, the barbarism, the madness, unless someone pushes one of those very dangerous buttons because, to stay in power, the regime in my country needs the war to continue. We cannot have illusions.
When do you think you will be able to return to your country?
At the moment, it is impossible, and it breaks my heart because my father is there, he is almost 90 years old and he is very sick. But by now I’ve spoken out against the war a million times, and new Russian laws criminalize that kind of dissent. An opposition leader, Vladimir Kara-Murza, has been sentenced to 25 years in jail for that, and many others have suffered a similar crackdown. If I go back home, chances are I’ll end up doomed too.
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